Swift as a striking snake Nick's opened hand flashed out. The overlord's head rocked at the impact. "Shut up!" Nick's voice was low and deadly and his captured gun covered the stairway. But the footsteps outside went on past. "Do you want--" Harmon began, one hand reaching toward his coat pocket. Nick saw the movement starting. Harmon uttered a squeal of pain as the heavy gun barrel chopped down with bone-crushing force. He moaned and clutched his injured hand while Nick returned the gun to his belt and dipped into the overlord's pocket. He whistled under his breath as he saw the small metal box, and a feeling of uneasy longing swept through him. Day and night that box had remained on a small table in the lower hallway, presided over by an orderly who opened it to anyone who asked. The Gravinol was given freely to any Mec, but its method of distribution was a clever psychological trick to emphasize the dependence of each individual upon the Martian Exploitation Company. Automatically he dropped it inside his tattered shirt. "To your ship, Harmon. Get moving!" "But you can't--" "I said move!" The overlord gasped, more from the indignity than from pain, as Nick's water-soaked boot met his trousers. "I am The Man!" he tried to bluster. "I know." Nick's answer was coldly venomous. It was sheer bad luck that brought Colonel Hammer around the corner of the building just as Nick prodded his captive out into the sea of mud, and more bad luck that the camp's commander was nervously fingering a night gun. Nick felt the gun's light beam fall upon him, saw the red sighting spot, and felt a stunning tug at his shoulder just as he threw himself flat. Then Harmon's pistol rocked in his hand and Hammer's body vanished in a shower of coruscating orange sparks. Groggily Nick pushed himself to a sitting position. He tried to move his arm and found it limp. His right hand explored the injury. It seemed to be a flesh wound. Harmon! The ship! All at once he recalled his mission. The overlord had vanished in the darkness and there was no time to look for him. The ship came first. His hand moved from the box of Gravinol to his pistol. * * * * * The shining hull lay in a depression blasted into the dry sand by its own landing jets. Water glistened darkly around it now, and against the gleaming metal the open entry port was a circle of blackness. Nick's legs were heavy with clinging mud and weakness as he waded into the pool, and only the knowledge that it was now or never kept him in motion. His eyes slitted and the gun came up as he glimpsed movement in the water. There it was again, a flash of white with something darker beside it. "Nick!" a voice screamed. "Don't shoot!" The cry was too late to stop his trigger finger, but he managed to raise the gun so that the bullet whined off into the darkness. "Nick!" she screamed again. "It's me!"